The Potential Enigma of Philokalic Spirituality for the Western Mind

To the Western mind, the starkness of philokalic spirituality with its constant emphasis on watchfulness, and the controlling of thoughts through unceasing prayer may be perplexing.  There is in the West an almost inherent suspicion of things, especially spiritual, regarding asceticism involving restriction of thoughts unless such practices are stripped of anything approaching moral judgment or recognition of evil influence.  One might, for example, be attracted to and engage in certain practices of meditation if the emphasis is on obtaining peace of mind and obtaining a state of inner calmness.  Among those who do have religious and moral sensibilities that allow for such asceticism, the lack of emphasis on imaginative meditation on the life of Christ and his passion still presents something of an enigma. While the Western spiritual tradition does not lack such notions and spiritual writers who emphasize the type of spirituality the desert fathers put forward, the prevailing practice centers on imaginative and affective prayer and discursive mediation.  This may make the Evagrian spirituality that prevails in the Philokalia seem obscure and foreign.  Kallistos Ware writes: “Even though only a few pages are devoted to the works of Evagrios Pontus himself, the book as a whole makes constant use of his threefold classification of the spiritual way into the active life (praktiki), the contemplation of nature (physiki) and the contemplation of God (theologia).  It also repeats in many places Evagrios’s description of prayer as a ‘shedding of thoughts’, a laying aside of images and discursive thinking. ‘When you are praying,‘ says Evagrios, ‘do not shape within yourself any image of the Deity, and do not let your intellect be stamped with the impress of any form; but approach the Immaterial in an immaterial manner, and then you will understand.‘  

I mention all of this because it is fundamental to having a clear understanding of prayer and watchfulness as described in the writings of Hesychios that I have been considering in recent posts.  With the exception of a few rare instances, the ascetic struggle and the manner of praying that is part of that struggle, notably the practice of the Jesus prayer, the Philokalia presents a Evagrian spirituality that is ‘apophatic‘.  

The writers of the Philokalia, Hesychios among them, emphasize the interactions between thoughts, passions and sinful acts.  Understanding these interactions and the fathers’ use of such terms is imperative.  Before moving on to consider Hesychios’ teaching on controlling thoughts, it may be helpful to briefly consider a few definitions offered by Gregory of Sinai.  These few paragraphs give great insight into why the fathers place special emphasize on struggling with distracting thoughts.  

Gregory writes:

“Sinful acts provoke passions, the passions provoke distractive thoughts and distractive thoughts, provoke fantasies. The fragmented memory begets a multiplicity of ideas, forgetfulness, causes the fragmentation of the memory, ignorance leads to forgetfulness, and appetites are aroused by misdirected emotions, and misdirected emotions by committing sinful acts. A sinful act is provoked by a mindless desire for evil and a strong attachment to the senses and to sensory things” (Philokalia IV).

The Fathers of the Philokalia taught that sense factors can evoke the passions. The senses are mainly visual, but can be auditory, taste, touch and smell as well. In anticipation of many modern psychologists, the Fathers understood that cognition, memory and emotions scan also be triggered by such cues.

St. Gregory of Sinai again expresses these factors well:

“Distractive thoughts arise and are activated in the soul's intelligent faculty, violent passions in the incensive faculty, the memory of bestial appetites in the desiring faculty, imaginary forms in the mind and ideas in the conceptualizing faculty ... We are provoked to sin by such thoughts; the irruption of evil thoughts is like the current of a river, and when as a result of this we give our assent to sin, our heart is overwhelmed as though by a turbulent flood” (Philokalia IV).

The Fathers understood that the senses are activated by such distractive thoughts and so the battle must be waged there. Thus, St. Gregory continues:

“By the "deep mire" (Ps. 69:2) understand slimy sensual pleasure or the sludge of lechery, or the burden of material things. Weighed down by all this, the impassioned intellect casts itself into the depths of despair ... sin ... is named according to its external manifestation” (Philokalia IV).

Such thoughts and behavior can become deeply entrenched (habitual) and our only overcome by ascetic struggle, humility, prayer and the grace of God.  St. Nilus noted, "A practice leads to a habit, and habit takes root like second nature. It is difficult and painful to stir or transform a nature.”  Likewise,  St. Gregory of Sinai wrote, "The cause and origin of the passions is the misuse of things ... (and) expresses the bias of the will ... " (Philokalia IV).  

With these considerations in mind, perhaps we can begin to understand the firmness of Hesychios as discusses the kinds of watchfulness and why he wants us to be particularly attentive to these measures and practice them with diligence.  He writes:

“I shall now tell you in plain, straightforward language what I consider to be the types of watchfulness which gradually cleanse the intellect from impassioned thoughts.  In these times of spiritual warfare I have no wish to conceal beneath words whatever in this treatise may be of use, especially to more simple people.  As St. Paul puts it: ‘Pay attention, my child Timothy, to what you read.’ (1Tim 4:13).

“One type of watchfulness consists in closely scrutinizing every mental image or provocation; for only by means of a mental image can Satan fabricate an evil thought and insinuate this into the intellect in order to lead it astray.”

“A second type of watchfulness consist in freeing the heart from all thoughts, keeping it profoundly silent and still, and in praying.”

“A third type consists in continually and humbling calling upon the Lord Jesus Christ for help.”

“A forth type is always to have the thought of death in one’s mind.”

“These types of watchfulness, my child, act like doorkeepers and bar entry to evil thoughts.  Elsewhere, if God gives me words, I shall deal more fully with a further type which, along with others, is also effective: this is to fix one’s gaze on heaven and to pay no attention to anything material.”

“When we have to some extent cut off the causes of the passions, we should devote our time to spiritual contemplation; for if we fail to do this we shall easily revert to the fleshly passions, and so achieve nothing but the complete darkening of our intellect and its reversion to material things” (Philokalia I, pp. 164-165)

The ascetic struggle described here is great and constant, but its goal is not simply self mastery or freedom from thought or sinful passions.  There is a radical personal element involved in the discipline, emphasized in the practice of the Jesus prayer which directs our thoughts and our hearts to God.  We do not seek to cleanse the heart and the intellect (nous: the eye of the heart) for ourselves but for God.  Jesus warns against a failure to keep this in mind as does Hesychios in his final comment.  

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.  Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12: 43-45)  

If we sweep and clean the house without having Christ coming to dwell in and be Master of that house, more demons will return and we will find ourselves in a worse state than when we began.

Reading the Philokalia: "Where do we begin?"

In reading about the Philokalia, I have come across a number of wonderful resources.  Among these have been a few articles by Kallistos Ware about the history of the development of the Philokalia.  The most recent article that I have read is entitled “St. Nikodimos and the Philokalia”, one of a series of papers presented at a conference at Cambridge in 2003 and compiled in a book called “Mount Athos, the Sacred Bridge: The Spirituality of the Holy Mountain.”  The aim of the conference was to draw attention to the historic importance, the spirituality, and the religious legacy of the Holy Mountain.  Much of the article is a very thoughtful exploration of the eighteenth century hesychast renaissance that produced the Philokalia and the key figures responsible for this compilation of the writings of the Fathers and those who influenced them.  Ware’s analysis of the overlap between Velichokovsky’s translation program and the contents of the Greek Philokalia is fascinating and alone makes the article worth reading.  Although I have already touched upon some of this history in previous posts, it would definitely be worthwhile to return to the subject in the future.  Beyond this, in the article Ware addresses issues of readership, the scope and content of the Philokalia and the ultimate goal in reading it.  

However, what I found most interesting for the moment was Ware’s response to the question: “In what order should the different treatises in the Philokalia be read?  Where should we begin?”   It is to this question I would like to turn before going back to a discussion of various themes found in the writings as a whole.  Ware states that it is probably not the best plan, so far as the Philokalia is concerned, to read the writings in chronological order from beginning to end.  Rather, he suggests the following sequence “which corresponds in part, although not entirely, to the reading list supplied in a dream to the Russian Pilgrim by his dead starets, and to a similar list given by Fr. Nikon to the English translators of the Philokalia.”  This list includes: (1) Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos, ‘Century’ (Philokalia 4, 197-295; ET Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, 164-270), (2) Hesychios, ‘On Watchfulness and Holiness’ (Philokalia 1, 141-73; ET 1, 162-98); (3) Evagrios, ‘On Prayer’ (Philokalia 1, 176-89; ET 1, 55-71); (4) ‘A Discourse on Abba Philimon’ (Philokalia 2, 241-52; ET 2, 344-57); (5) St. Symeon the New Theologian, ‘On Faith’ (Philokalia 5, 73-80; ET 4, 16-24); (6) Gregory of Sinai, ‘On the Signs of Grace and Delusion’; ‘On Stillness’; ‘On Prayer’ (Philokalia 4, 66-88; ET 4, 257-86).  Ware notes that Kadloubovsky and Palmer in their translation “Writings of the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, open with the same four authors as on the Pilgrim’s list in the same order and add texts from Gregory of Sinai and Symeon the New Theologian.  

Ware does not get into specifics about why this particular grouping may be significant but simply holds it forward as a starting point given the unique nature of the work and its central themes.  He does, however, offer us the following insights: “‘Not a book but a library’: so Kaisarios Daponte described the Philokalia.  It is, however, a library with a specific character and an all-embracing unity.  Although it has much to say about love for our fellow humans and practical compassion, its theme is not social and political action.  Equally its primary subject is not outward asceticism or liturgical prayer.  Its concern is rather with the ‘inner Kingdom’ of the heart, and it shows how this ‘inner Kingdom’ is to be explored through the acquisition of ‘nepsis’ and ‘hesychia’, and through the ceaseless invocation of the Holy Name of Jesus.  It sets before us, as our ultimate raison d’etre, the attainment of self-transcending ‘theosis’, through a union of love whereby we participate in God’s uncreated energies, although not in his essence.  In this way it proclaims both the otherness and the nearness of the eternal; God is beyond and above the entire creation, the greatest mystery of all mysteries, yet he is at the same time everywhere present and fills all things.  Although the Philokalia is neither exhaustive nor systematic, none the less these unifying master themes justify us in speaking of a distinctively ‘philokalic’ spirituality.  The work is indeed exactly what St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain claimed it to be: ‘a mystical school of noetic prayer’ (119). 

In the past, I have read the four volumes of the Philokalia and the “Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart” as they became available to me and from beginning to end.  Before moving ahead in my own study, I plan to reread the texts in the order suggested above - - keeping Ware’s insights and the historical realities he unpacks in mind and trusting the guidance given to the Russian Pilgrim.  Perhaps in doing so and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, a clearer understanding of the viewpoint of the late eighteenth century will emerge and the desire of St. Nikodimos, St. Makarios and others to revive the neptic-hesychastic spiritual tradition will be enlivened in my own heart.

Love is Attentive and Watchful: Guarding the Heart and Taking Every Thought Captive for Christ

The full title of the compilation of writings of the Desert Fathers is ‘The Philokalia of the Neptic Saints gathered from our Holy Theophoric Father, through which, by means of the philosophy of ascetic practice and contemplation, the intellect is purified, illumined, and made perfect.’  Thus, the full title of the book refers to the original authors as the ‘Neptic Saints’, emphasizing one of their common practices of nepsis or ‘watchfulness’.  It refers to much more than general spiritual alertness and vigilance and is the practice of watching all of one's thoughts and fantasies, thus keeping guard over the heart and mind.

    

Anthony Coniaris, in his work ‘Philokalia: the Bible of Orthodox Spirituality’, states: “Nepsis means to be completely present to where we are just as a mother has an attentive ear to the least sound of her baby in the crib even as she talks on the phone or vacuums the rug.  Love is attentive and watchful.  Bishop Kallistos Ware tells us that ‘watchfulness means, among other things, to be present where we are - at this specific point in space, at this particular moment in time.  All too often we are scattered and dispersed, we are living, not with alertness in the present, but with nostalgia in the past, or with misgiving and wishful thinking in the future. . . The neptic man, then, is gathered into the here and now.  He is the one who seizes ‘kairos’, the decisive moment of opportunity.”   

This may seem to be a rather broad definition, but its broadness captures the all-encompassing nature and importance of nepsis for the spiritual life.  Coniaris reminds us: “There is in the mind a deep center where the whole person converges.  This center is to be completely tuned in to God.  To be completely present to God is the beginning of prayer.  The essential part of prayer is this inner attention to God  . . .”  Thus, nepsis is intimately tied to what was addressed in the previous post - the intellect (nous).  “The intellect (nous) is like a bridegroom.  St. Ilias the Presbyter said, ‘The intellect that encloses itself within the mind during prayer is like a bridegroom conversing with the bride inside the bridal chamber.’”

Philokalic spirituality presupposes above all that the deep center where the whole person converges should be healed.  When the nous (intellect) is darkened through sin, the whole soul is darkened and defiled.  

Hierotheos Vlachos in his work ‘Orthodox Psychotherapy’ speaks of this healing in terms of two kinds of watchfulness: the guarding of the nous and the guarding of the thoughts.  He writes: “The guarding of the nous is a ‘watchtower commanding a view over our whole spiritual life.’  The guarding of the nous has been called ‘light-producing and lightning-producing and light-giving and fire-bearing’ and it surpasses many virtues.  The guarding of the nous is that which by Christ’s power can change men from being sinful, indecent, profane, ignorant, uncomprehending and unjust to being just, responsive, pure, holy and wise.”

“Watchfulness is also called the guarding of thoughts.  St. John of the Ladder teaches that it is one thing to guard thoughts and another to watch over the nous.  Watching over the nous is higher than guarding the thoughts.  This is true in the sense that we defined earlier, that the nous is the eye of the soul, the heart, while a thought is what functions in a man’s mind.  It is one thing to try to keep the mind pure and another to try to keep the nous, that is the heart, pure.  Nevertheless, purity of thoughts is needed, because it is impossible to keep one’s inner self free from sin if one has evil thoughts.  The patristic commandment is to concentrate our nous (the soul’s energy and essence), to be watchful of thoughts and to fight against impassioned thoughts.  It is essential that we pay attention to our reflections, recollections and notions.  Indeed in this struggle to keep the nous pure and have constant remembrance of God, we have to discard the good thoughts as well, because even with good thoughts the nous gradually forms the habit of withdrawing from God.  The monk Silouan taught: ‘The saints learned how to do battle with the enemy.  They knew that the enemy uses intrusive thoughts to deceive us, and so all though their lives they declined such thoughts.  At first sight there seems to be nothing wrong about an intrusive thought but soon it begins to divert the nous from prayer, and then stirs up confusion.  The rejection of all intrusive thoughts, however apparently good, is therefore essential, and equally essential is it to have a nous pure in God.’  We should protect the eye of the soul from every thought, as we do the eye of the body from every harmful object.  When a person becomes accustomed to this holy struggle of laying aside all thoughts, then the nous tastes the goodness of the Lord and acquires purity so that it can distinguish thoughts and ‘store in the treasures of memory those thoughts which are good and have been sent by God, while casting out those which are evil and come from the devil.’”

Thus, the clarion call that comes to us from the Scriptures and the Fathers is “Watch and pray.”  In the words of Philotheus, “At every hour and moment let us guard the heart with all diligence from thoughts that obscure the soul’s mirror, for in that mirror Jesus Christ, the wisdom and power of God the Father, is . . .luminously reflected.”

 

The Helmsman of the Spiritual Life: The Eye of the Heart

Before approaching themes of the Philokalia and the spirituality of the hesychast Fathers, it is helpful, and one might say absolutely necessary, to clarify how they use various words.  Indeed, over the years I have been most grateful for the wonderful glossary that the translators provided at the end of the first volume.  Without this aid, I dare say, the meaning of many of the Father’s sayings would be completely lost or at least severely truncated. The two other resources that have helped me the most are Bishop Hierotheos Vlachos’ “Orthodox Psychotherapy” (which offers the most refined distinctions regarding the terms the Fathers use of terms and to which I will return in later posts) and Anthony Coniaris’ “Confronting and Controlling Thoughts” and “The Beginner’s Introduction to the Philokalia.”  As a first step in understanding the Father’s use of the term “nous” (mind, intellect), I offer his very thoughtful and succinct reflections for your consideration.  One very quickly recognizes the significance of these distinctions for understanding philokalic spirituality and the ascetic tradition of the desert fathers.  Coniaris writes:

“Orthodox spirituality places great emphasis on the ‘nous’, or mind, and the thoughts, ‘logismoi’, that the mind produces.  It does so because everything we do begins in the nous or mind with the thoughts (logismoi).  ‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he,’ we read in Proverbs.  So, let’s begin our study of confronting and controlling thoughts according to the Fathers of the Philokalia with a brief study, first of the nous (mind) . . . 

In an interview, Bishop Kallistos Ware offered the following definition of nous or intellect: ‘Nous, in particular, is a very difficult word to translated.  If you just say ‘mind’, that is far too vague.  In our translation of the Philokalia, we, with some hesitations, opted for the word intellect, emphasizing that it does not mean primarily the rational faculties.  The nous is the spiritual vision that we all possess, though many of us have not discovered it.  The nous implies a direct, intuitive appreciation of truth, where we apprehend the truth not simply as the conclusion of a reasoned argument, but we simply see that something is so.  The nous is cultivated certainly through study, through training our faculties, but also it is developed through prayer, through fasting, through the whole range of the Christian life.  This is what we need to develop most of all . . ., something higher than the reasoning brain and deeper than the emotions.’

Nous then is spiritual vision that enables us to recognize truth as soon as we see it.

An additional definition of nous comes from the book ‘Themes of the Philokalia - The Nous’.  ‘A nous that is pure and loves and does not offend God is similar to an eye that does not even accept the smallest dust particle.  It is from the nous that all the powers of the soul depend.  That is why the Lord tells us ‘if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.  But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.  Since the nous of contemporary man has fallen into the same sin as Adam and Eve, it has turned towards creation with an unrestrainable idolatrous and evil disposition.  In this way the nous of man, away from the vision of the glory of God, becomes either demonic or bestial.  The nous which is overcome by the passions and egoism is unenlightened, dark, short-sighted and feeble.’

Thus, purified nous, enlightened by God’s grace, is designed to be the eye of the soul.

The nous is also designed to presided over the person as the ‘hegemonikon’, the dominant leader or ruler of the personality.  Yet because of the Fall of man, the nous has been wounded and is now subject to disruption by epithymia, by the desires imposed by the powerful passions.  It is only by God’s grace and askesis, discipline, resistance, that man can be healed and come to prevail over the epithymia(desire) of the passions through the power of the Holy Spirit.  St. Hesychios states that the Fathers liken the intellect (nous) to the leadership of Moses: ‘The Fathers regard Moses the Lawgiver as an ikon of the intellect.  He saw God in the burning bush; his face shone with glory; he was made a god to Pharoah by the God of gods; he flayed Egypt with a scourge; he led Israel our of bondage and gave laws.  These happenings, when seen metaphorically and spiritually, are activities and privileges of the intellect hegemonikon.’

Like Moses, the nous (intellect) is called and empowered by God’s grace to be the dominant factor - the acropolis -ruling over the kingdom of the self.  It is the hegemonikon, the rudder that steers and directs the kingdom of self.  If the individual person allowed the hegemonikon to rule, spiritual harmony and progress would follow.  The hegemonikon is what Jesus calls ‘the eye’, which, if it is single, will fill the whole body with light.  Some consider the hegemonikon to be the ‘mind of Christ’ which we receive when we ‘put on Christ’ in holy baptism.  

The translators of the Philokalia themselves offer the following definition of nous (intellect):

‘Nous is the highest faculty in man, through which - provided it is purified - he knows God . . . Unlike the dianoia or reason from which it must be carefully distinguished, the intellect does not function by formulating abstract concepts and then arguing on the basis to a conclusion reached through deductive reasoning, but it understands divine truth by means of immediate experience, intuition or ‘simple cognition’.  The intellect dwells in the ‘depths of the soul’; it constitutes the innermost aspect of the heart. . . The intellect is the organ of contemplation, the ‘eye of the heart’.” 

In the future, I hope, by using other resources and the Fathers themselves, to clarify this understanding of the nous and to address how the nous is purified and healed.

The Characteristics of a Distinctive "Philokalic" Spirituality

From all appearances the Philokalia seems like a mere collection of texts written by 36 different authors.  Indeed, Kallistos Ware reminds us, the word Philokalia can signify “a love what is beautiful and good, love for God as the source of all things beautiful.”  But, he continues, it can also simply mean “anthology”.  When a person picks up the Philokalia, the second meaning seems to be the dominant one.  Ware states: “The different texts are given simply in chronological order, with no attempt at systematic classification, no grouping of topics, and no clear indication which writings are considered suitable for ‘beginners’ and which for the more ‘advanced.’”  But when we begin to look deeper, dominant motifs and master themes emerge which, Ware states, “give to the Philokalia a coherent unity and a definite purpose.”  

According to Ware, the first theme and general scope of the Philokalia is Inner Action.  The Philokalia is concerned with the interior life.  It is not concerned with bodily asceticism, although this of course is discussed and a necessary part of the spiritual life, but rather with “guarding the intellect.”  “What it reveals to us, says St. Nikodimos in his preface, is ‘the kingdom of God that is within you,  . . . the treasure hidden in the field of the heart.’”  This kingdom within is characterized by two fundamental virtues - nepsis and hesychia.  Nepsis “is a term denoting sobriety, temperance, lucidity and above all vigilance and watchfulness.”  Hesychia “signifies not so much exterior silence as inner stillness of heart.”  These two virtues, which we will discuss further in later posts, foster greater freedom from the thoughts and fantasies often associated with our passions and give rise to pure prayer free of all images and discursive thought.  

The second theme, according to Ware, describes the basic aim of the Philokalia: Deification or theosis - a direct, transforming union with God.  St. Nikodimos in the first sentence of his preface to the Philokalia writes: “God, the blessed nature, perfection that is more than perfect, the creative principle of all that is good and beautiful, Himself transcending all goodness and all beauty, in His supremely divine plan preordained from all eternity the deification of humankind.”  Simply put, the supreme end of the spiritual life is to be one with God through having his image and likeness perfected within us.  

The third and final theme discussed by Ware is the means of this Deification: the Continual Invocation of the Holy Name.  The grace bestowed on us at baptism is obscured by our sin and through being immersed in worldly cares and controlled by our passions.  Once again in the preface to the Philokalia, Nikodimos tells us how this grace can be reactivated: “The Spirit. . . revealed to the Fathers a method that is truly wonderful . . .whereby grace can be rediscovered.  This was to pray continually to our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, not simply to pray with the intellect and the lips alone; . . . but to turn the whole intellect towards the inner self, which is a marvelous experience; and so inwardly, within the very depths of the heart, to invoke the all-holy Name of the Lord and to implore mercy from Him, concentrating our attention solely on the bare words of the prayer, not allowing anything else whatever to gain entry from within or from without, but keeping the mind totally free from all forms and colors.”  When we engage in this spiritual work and live in accord with the commandments then we begin to “return to the perfect grace of the Spirit that was bestowed upon us in the beginning through Baptism.”  

As we begin our study of the Philokalia at the Oratory, and in later posts we will be discussing in depth these and approximately 20 other related themes of “philokalic” spirituality and examine how these themes are developed by particular writers.    

Quotes from, “The inner unity of the Philokalia and its influence in East and West” by Kallistos Ware, pp. 6-10.  Edit. Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Athens 2004. 

Ressourcement and the Philokalia: "The Best Belongs to Everyone"

We are perhaps familiar these days with the term ressourcement as embodying the fundamental call of the Second Vatican Council to “return to the sources” (the scriptures and the Fathers of the Church) that we might be renewed in our understanding and practice of the faith.  It is interesting to note that the emergence of the Philokalia in the 18th century was part of another far reaching and radical program of ressourcement within Orthodox Christianity.  St. Nikodimos and St. Makarios, the compilers of the writings of the Philokalia, were a part of what is called the Kollyvades movement on Mount Athos that according to Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia, had three primary features.  The first centered on establishing a more faithful observance of the liturgical traditions and practices of the Church, e.g., celebrating Sunday as the day of the Lord Resurrection, not to be supplanted by any other memorial service and, more importantly, Ware notes, advocating the frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist.  The second feature is a patristic renaissance.  It is here that the Kollyvades initiated an ambitious program of publication which included the Philokalia.  Finally, Ware states, they emphasized above all the importance of the patristic teachings on Hesychasm which they believed was the “living heart of the Philokalia” and “gives to its varied contents a single unity.”  

Ware states:

“Such, then, is the cultural context of the Philokalia.  It forms part - a fundamental and primary part - of the Patristic ressourcement that the Kollyvades sought to promote.  The Kollyvades looked upon the Fathers, not simply as an archeological relic from the distant past, but as a living guide for contemporary Christians.  They therefore hoped that the Philokalia would not gather dust on the shelves of scholars, but that it would alter people’s lives.  They meant it to have a supremely practical purpose.  In this connection it is significant that St. Nikodimos and St. Makarios intended the Philokalia to be a book not just for monks but for the laity, not just for specialists but for all Christians. . . .In particular, St. Nikodimos maintains, the Pauline injunction, ‘Pray without ceasing‘ is intended not just for hermits in caves and on mountain-tops but for married Christians with responsibilities for a family, for farmers, merchants and lawyers, even for kings and courtiers living in palaces.‘  It is a universal command.  The best belongs to everyone.”

Quotes from, “The inner unity of the Philokalia and its influence in East and West” by Kallistos Ware.  Edit. Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Athens 2004